BISHKEK, April 4 /TASS/. Kyrgyzstan is ready to mediate the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Foreign Ministry of Kyrgyzstan said in a statement released on Monday.

"The Kyrgyz Republic stands for working out constructive proposals on searching for ways of resolving the dispute and suggests using the historical experience of signing the Bishkek protocol of May 4, 1994 for rendering political assistance," the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said.

The ministry also expressed the Kyrgyz government’s concern with the worsening situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, a de facto independent Armenian populated region, which internationally recognized to be part of Azerbaijan, which led to bloodshed and human casualties.

Kyrgyzstan has called on the sides in the Karabakh conflict to immediately sit down to negotiations to discuss how to settle and de-escalate the conflict exclusively by peaceful diplomatic means on the basis of universally recognized principles and norms of international law.

The leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the unrecognized Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh signed a ceasefire treaty in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in May 1994 on the initiative of the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, the Kyrgyz parliament and the parliament and the foreign ministry of Russia.

The warring parties stopped all military hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh on May 12, 1994.

Fierce armed clashes radically aggravated the situation on the contact line separating the sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the night to April 2. After that, the sides accused each other of violating the truce.